Time, McCain, and the Offline American

In the 8/25 issue of Time, there is an opinion piece that asks the question whether McCain's being essentially web illiterate should affect your decision on whether to vote for him.

Hey, I am all in for Obama. $4,600. Maxed out. So don't expect objectivity here. I am not capable of it. But actually that is not what this post is about.

What I really want to talk about is how the Internet has upended so much of what we once accepted as fact, and how that makes all of us dated with regard to our understanding of what makes business, government, the arts, and everything else operate today.

Every day we see companies grappling with the changed reality of info distribution --companies, campaigns, and old media erroneously strategizing to control their messages when the reality is that control is no longer an option. It's influence that we can hope to exercise.

How can a company address a potential PR issue if they don't understand how info gets dispersed today?

How can a government fight multinational extremist groups if they don't understand how the web works.

In each of these cases, it is certainly possible to understand how the Internet works without sending 300 Twitters a day. But it is difficult. Me, I have struggled with my own biases and beliefs about media since I made the switch to digital. I still detest the idea of consumer control. Detest it. And frankly I think it is false to believe that consumers are in control. If we pay for the web, we control it. But there are many people who tell me I am dead wrong.

And John McCain is certainly far more impressive than I am. So he may have an incredible instinctive understanding of new media. I just wonder. I am 44 and the desire to Twitter continues to baffle me. Imagine what its like if you were born in 1936!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.